In the commissioning phase, a ZGPD is to be joined to a ZigBee network. An essential step in the commissioning, is obtaining the radio channel on which the ZGP network is operating, called the operational channel.
In multi-hop ZigBee environments targeted for the ZGPD usage, usage of a predefined separate commissioning channel is not possible, since switching the entire ZigBee network to the commissioning channel is error-prone, cumbersome and will negatively impact sleeping ZigBee End Devices.
It is a requirement on the commissioning procedure to have a possibility of involving intermediate devices, because the ZGPD may already be installed and be out of radio range of the device it is supposed to be configured by and/or paired with (i.e. the device that it will control).
Passive or active scanning for network activity (according to IEEE 802.15.4 procedures) is too energy-costly for the ZGPD.
Other methods of channel setting, such as typing it in, entering it using DIP switches on the ZGPD, etc. are considered too complicated for the home user and require dedicated user interface and/or hardware means.
Accordingly, the present invention describes a procedure for an energy-restricted device capable of limited reception to obtain the network operational channel. The main aspect is that the energy harvested is used to send a beacon request and to receive a response. The response, however, is not the response to this current beacon request, but to a previous beacon request.